With the new banlist finally released, a lot of us are either finding ourselves with decks that got hit fairly badly (Agents, TGs, Plants) or without the funds necessary to build some of the more competitive decks (Wind-Ups, Dino Rabbit). Those of you that are unfamiliar with the new banlist, be sure to read up on it here (if you still see the September list, press Ctrl + F5):http://www.yugioh-ca...ited/index.html

I am likely facing some similar issues as at least a few of you, so I'd like to open up some discussion about the future meta. My most competitive deck (Agents) took a hit to one of the best cards in the deck, decreasing its consistency enough to make me scrap the deck for now. I've tested out Inzektors thoroughly for the last couple of weeks and have decided that I don't like its playstyle. Not only that, but it has a very weak 2nd and 3rd game (due to side-deck hatred all over the place), and it has a very poor match-up against Dino Rabbit. I don't have $1200 to drop on a Dino Rabbit or Wind-Up deck, either. So I'm looking to you guys to help me decide what to build next.

Please note that this is intended for a competitive environment. I know a lot of you like to stick to Tier 2 and below decks because they're fun (and I've got more than a few of them myself), but I am looking for something to take to Regional and higher level events in the hopes of doing well.

To start off the discussion, I'd say we should look at recent YCS Atlanta results. The top 32 consisted of 15 Dino Rabbit decks, 9 Wind-Up decks, 2 Inzektor decks, 2 TG decks, 1 Empty Jar deck, 1 Agent deck, 1 Dark World deck, and 1 Evol deck. Granted, this isn't March yet, but the meta is very similar to what we can expect. The triangle of Tier 1 decks that we had before (Plants, Agents, and Dino Rabbit) has transformed into a new triangle (Dino Rabbit, Wind-Ups, and Inzektors), with Dino Rabbit easily taking the peak of that triangle until side decks are altered to tweak the meta shift, in which case one of the other two decks will rise up in the ranks. The TG and Agent decks can basically be ignored at this point, as some of their power cards have been hit heavily (and they weren't that powerful post-ORCS anyway). Empty Jar is a rogue deck that will always do well occasionally, but not consistently. Dark World is difficult to run well as it falls to the same Side Deck cards as Inzektors (Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror, mainly). That leaves Evols.

Evols are a very new archetype that a lot of people haven't yet mastered. They have very quick access to Laggia/Dolkka though, as well as some awesome tech/combos (Enemy Controller/Evo-Force + Najasho comes to mind). They seem pretty solid to me, but do they have room for anti-meta tech to combat the 3 top decks?

What other decks do you think we can expect to see? How competitive do you think they'll be, and how much room do they have to combat the top 3 decks? How well can they come back if those 3 decks do go off?

In my opinion, we are in a degenerate and predictable format which will stagnate until the next set releases. On the upside, this makes it really easy to build anti-meta decks. You only really need to focus on countering 2-3 major deck types, so you can heavily tech it.

If you can get an Anti-Meta deck which utilises both Summon Limit or Gozen Match/Rivalry of Warlords, your opponent should be locked-down like hell. I suppose Skill Drain deck would be the best for this, except you can't really use Gozen or Rivalry. But Summon Limit is a very underrated card, which completely stops Tour Guide, Rabbit, Wind-Ups, Inzektors, Nordics and practically anything that synchs or Xyzs. But with Triple MST, it's going to be tough.. That's when Dark Bribe is useful, because your opponent will draw another card which is totally useless since they're locked down.

I think Blackwings are still a good all-round pick because of their adaptability. They can also Side into Rivalry, Gozen and/or Skill Drain. Depending on the build, you can even go with Devastation Virus, so I think they're a safe pick this format. Yes, I'm biased xD But they're still good, it's just that the TCG lost interest on them. And they're pretty cheap!

A T.G. Stun variant is still viable as well. Sure, you lost 2 Strikers and 1 Tengu, but that leaves you space to main other things. You can go w/o Skill Drain and main King Tiger Wanghu instead, which shuts down Inzektors, Wind-Ups and Samurai. You can also main 3 Rai-Oh + BLS and the build kept its same amount of hate on its backrows. You could even go with T.G. Cyber Magician: the ability to Normal Summon and go into Wonder Magician instantly is rather cool.

I think Karakuris are worth a shot as well. They kept all their mad tricks, so they'd make a really nice threat. Their only "bad" matchup is Dino Rabbit, which isn't a problem at all thanks to Ninishi's Double Summon being a Continuous effect. The ability to pull a Naturia Beast first turn will be very valuable IMHO (so is the option of pulling all 3 effect-negating Naturia Synchros), and the ability to OTK even if they can Maxx "C" is a very good thing as well. They can be built around really cheap cards too (Instant Fusions + Cash Cache), and their Extra Deck is on the mid range of expensiveness so it's affordable. They run on few monsters, so you have lots of space for main-decked tech. You can also make them stun-ish and main Rai-Ohs + Dualities, giving you a different kind of consistency. I know I'll experiment with Karakuri a lot. Did I mention Karakuri can Side into Macro Cosmos with ease?

What I can say is that both Rai-Oh, Veiler and Maxx "C" should be mained or sided in doubles at the very least, and that any Deck that can main or side Macro Cosmos should probably do so. Starlight Road will probably see a lot of play as well, making double Torrential a tricky pick. Cyber Dragon will pick up as a viable Side tool as well, thanks to the Wind-Up matchup: after a loop, you can Chimeratech their whole field to negate their advantage and gain a 3000+ ATK monster. Puppet Plant will make a triumphant comeback as well, and Chain Disappearance just got that much more useful.

tl;dr

I'd test Blackwing variants, Karakuri variants and T.G. Stun variants. They're still pretty good and not really hard to build.

I actually run a Chaos Agent deck that runs off of one Earth and one Hyperion. It has a fair amount of speed. With some tweaking I believe it could see some competitive play. Granted, I would let someone like DB or Sho who have competitive experience make the necessary changes.

Has anyone thought of Lightsworns or Twillight? with lumina back at two and XYZ's having been released, I think lightsworns can still muster a decent force. They'd have a bad matchup to insektors due to losing JD's, but other than that they can still explode pretty well.

Also, I've been playing around with a Falcon Stun build, which basically stops your opponent with Summon Limit, Grave of the Super Ancient Organism and Fiendish Chain and lets you recycle Limit Reverse and Call of the Haunted, not to mention the once-per-turn RFG of Big Bang Shot. It's weak against all the MST's of course, but it works well enough.

I'd go with pure LS due to consistency. And how they have a bad Inzektor matchup? Drop JD, blow field, then swarm with LS. They just need to main Trap Stuns to avoid Starlight and that's it.

@ Hoiguy: Why not max out CotH only and leave Limit Reverse alone? Unless you're planning to use it to blow some Sangans or Troopers, CotH is strictly better and can be used at 3 now xD Also, Safe Zone should be fun with Falcon.

As much revival as you could want, Lumina is at 2(Far more important than JD), you've got Heavy back now, hell you can run Call of the Haunted...this stuff should be awesome. I'm definitely at least trying it.

An E-Tele Deck seems extremely viable, to me. E-Tele to Psychic Commander to Gungnir if you run a WATER deck? Maybe Psychic Gadgets? E-Tele is extremely powerful and at two now, so...

Personally my opinion is to go rouge, Empty jar and such decks are insanely fun, and making a good one is very nice. I personally avoid using meta simply because its meta. Howevver since that isn't what you're neccisarily looking for I will suggest exodia, It has gained considerable stability and speed recently and can be quite effective. As far as combating the main decks all i can say is that inzectors lose to shdow mirror repetedly and that wind ups while effective, seemed to be rather fragile when i played them as losing certain cards cause them to completely lose the chain. even so i am still a fan of mass removal, with one of my favorite cards being lightning vortex as it can clear your oponents feild, making them lose further, their card economy as both synchros and xyzs take a decent amount of investment to get out. I have very little competitive expirience but this is the little bit i do undestand about the game and the current meta.

I'm not sure about rouge - women's makeup never did get me far in this game. *cough*

But rogue decks have always been a huge factor of Yugioh, and frankly they should never be underestimated. This format alone, we've seen two major events topped by rogue decks. Atlanta had Empty Jar and one of the European YCS's had Chain Burn. Rogue decks have always been a big part of the game and often win games based entirely off of their "surprise" factor. The only problem with them is that they usually sacrifice consistency for surprise. That's what makes them fall out in larger tournaments.

As far as the rest of this discussion is going, I like it. There's a lot of good input (outside of the supremely ironic "Iron Stomach corrects someone's grammar" incident).

One deck type that I think most people would classify as Stun I believe should have a good chance this format. The deck basically is filled with a lot of cards that are good by themselves and doesn't focus on combos. Cards like Thunder King and Gale are often considered "good by themselves." So the deck itself would be filled with splashable cards that only share one common focus: disrupting the opponent. That's what gives it the Stun name. But I'm thinking about taking that a step further (or backward I guess) and focus less on disrupting the opponent and more on "really awesome topdecking." Wind-Ups are everywhere and the Hunter loop is ridiculous. A lot of decks fall apart to that. Instead of depending on drawing a hand trap first turn, why not just build a deck that can easily sustain itself when it's stuck topdecking? Seems like an interesting thought, but that's all it is right now to me - a thought.

Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror as a main-decked card was actually included in the Evol deck that hit top 32 at Atlanta. He had a single copy in the main and 2 in the side.

I personally prefer having it in the side, but that's just because the Colorado meta is very random. You won't see the meta decks until you hit the top tables after round 3-4 anyway. Where I'm from, primarily rogue decks and anti-meta decks make up the majority. A main-decked Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror would actually hurt me more than help. But in a larger environment with more competitive meta decks (i.e. any YCS basically), it's a good call. You can always side it out in game 2 if need be.

I've been looking at a few other of these deck types. I actually just bought a Karakuri deck last week off a guy for $40, so I might play around with that idea.

Blackwings are always fun, and I have a lot of the cards for that as well, so that's also an option. I don't feel they'll be good until they get their additional support in GAOV, and even then I'm not sure either. They'd have to be heavily tech'd to work.

Samurais are quite obviously good, looking at YCS Guadalajara. They have a lot of room for anti-meta cards and can run both Rivalry and Gozen with ease. Getting the second Smoke Signal is just going to help them more. I consider them a rogue deck right now, but we'll see how the meta evolves. More people should pick this deck up again soon.

Gravekeepers lose a lot of their power in the new meta. They hurt Wind-Ups a bit, but Inzektors only get temporarily slowed down (as most of them run triple MST, Heavy, and can equip Hornet from the hand), and Rabbit decks don't give a damn. Their biggest issue is that if they don't go first, they take a very heavy hit from the Wind-Up loop. Gravekeepers are a bit of a combo deck, and have a lot of bad topdeck cards in that kind of scenario.

T.G. Stun will still have some power, but knocking Striker to 1 and Tengu to 2 really does hurt the deck quite a bit. One of their best plays was Striker -> TG1-EM1. Now they have to do that with Warwolf. And now they also have an even harder time summoning Warwolf. I really think that this hit will write them out of the competitive scene.

Lightsworn are definitely going to see more play. With Lumina at 2 (which in my opinion is the best card in the deck), they've regained a lot of power. Not to mention all of the recent reprints making them much more available to everyone. I don't think Twilight is going to quite do it, but a pure Lightsworn build can definitely be powerful again. On that topic, Lightsworn Zombies will be interesting again. I'd like to see someone test that again soon. I do think they'll have a poor Dino Rabbit match-up, but they do have the ability to topdeck well after a Wind-Up loop. It would be interesting to see how that goes.

The psychic engine can now easily become a splashable 5-card engine, so long as your extra deck has room for the synchros. Emergency Teleport x2, Krebons x2, and a single Psychic Commander - we may see this expand into several different deck types. This is definitely something to keep an eye on (or to work on breaking).

Though, there shouldn't have been a comma after "is".It's only a problem when Rothon starts correcting people's grammar. Then you know the world is gonna end.

Well, DB, what about that Jurrac deck you had? With Laggia still here (You have one, don't you? Maybe you don't) you can still have a pretty viable deck, which uses Gozen Match. And I really think it's Gozen and Rivalry that are impossible to run over, except with MST at 3.

That's actually a decent idea. I've been keeping an eye on the whole "dinosaur" type these past few weeks just because of the impact that Laggia and Dolkka have had. From what I've seen, you've got two ways to go at it: either the Rabbit/Evol way - special summoning by effects during the main phase (Rabbit/Westlo) or during the damage step (Westlo being flipped on the opponent's turn). Other methods are good with Guaiba - focusing on succesfully battling. My old build was a lot of fun, but tier 2 at best. It was fairly slow, but it could definitely be adapted. It's got potential, but I really don't foresee it being faster or more successful than Evols as far as churning out Laggia/Dolkka quickly. Though it does have more OTK potential.

And as far as Laggia goes - I don't currently have one, but I always end up grabbing them and trading them off quick as hell. Easy to get, easy to move. And now that their prices have dropped, it's that much easier.